Forbes Releases World's Self-Made Women Billionaires List

NEW YORK, NY (March 8, 2017) – Coinciding with International Women’s Day, Forbes released today the World’s Self-Made Women Billionaires list. A record 56 self-made female billionaires around the world made the list this year, up from 42 in 2016. Their combined wealth is $129.1 billion. 2017 marks the first year that the self-made-woman billionaire wealth has surpassed $100 billion. An all-time high of 25% of the world’s women billionaires are self-made, compared to 21% in 2016. This percentage has more than doubled since 2009.

With the death of her husband, Mike Ilitch in February 2017, Marian Ilitch, who owns the Little Caesars pizza chain and Detroit’s MotorCity Casino, along with other investments held with her family, is the new richest woman in America.

The richest self-made woman in the world is Zhou Qunfei, whose publicly traded Lens Technology makes glass covers for mobile phones and tablets for customers like Apple and Samsung. She’s one of 29 self-made women billionaires in Asia.

“More women entrepreneurs than ever before have climbed into the ten-figure club. A record 56 self-made women are now billionaires, including the first-ever from countries like Vietnam and Japan,” said Luisa Kroll, Managing Editor of Wealth at Forbes Media. “In fact, more than half of these enterprising women hail from Asia. Women are still the much rarer sex when it comes to wealth creation, but they are moving in the right direction.”

Country Breakdown of Self-Made Women Billionaires:

21 in China (37.5% of the list)

17 in the United States (30%)

5 in Hong Kong

3 in the United Kingdom

Countries with one a piece include Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Nigeria,

Russia, Switzerland and Vietnam

Newcomers: Vietnam (Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao) and Japan (Yoshiko Shinohara) have produced their first-ever self-made women billionaires. India’s Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, a returnee, is a billionaire again and is the only self-made woman billionaire in her country.

The total of 56 women includes 7 women who are billionaires in their own right, but are listed on Forbes’ World Billionaires’ ranking with their husbands with whom they started their businesses. Their fortunes have been separated for this list.

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